Island Council

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Cultural spaces · Subcategory: Institutions · Year: 1935-1940 · Authors: José Enrique Marrero Regalado

This building is the official seat of the island government. The island councils were, after the incorporation of the archipelago into the Crown of Castile, the main governing bodies of each of the islands. The one in Tenerife was located in La Laguna, until in the 19th century, with the new territorial configuration of the State through the provinces, its role ceased to be relevant. At the beginning of the 20th century they returned to prominence and by a law of 11 July 1912, the seven island councils of the Canary Islands re-emerged.

The new Island Council of Tenerife held its inaugural session on 16 March 1913, in the halls of the Santa Cruz Town Hall, as it did not yet have its own headquarters. After years of renting different properties in the city, the Corporation acquired a plot at the end of the 1920s on the newly built Avenida Marítima. In 1934 the president of the institution at that time, Maximino Acea, commissioned the project for the new headquarters from the architect José Enrique Marrero Regalado.

Marrero was aware from the first moment of the importance of the building to be constructed. In his personal diary he details how he made the final decision. Four solutions were simultaneously made in a kind of private competition openly facing two classical-eclectic style solutions, made by Marrero himself, and two rationalist type solutions (very fashionable at that time), made by a collaborator of his studio, the German architect Rudolf Schneider. The reasons given by Marrero regarding his final decision to choose one of his own designs refer to the durability of the classical solution, since in his own words " ...no art had yet been discovered that surpassed the classical in dignity and elegance. This will never go out of fashion. History confirms it ".

Escaping fashions that could be fleeting, Marrero opted for an unblemished representative sense. Therefore, he presented a sober and monumental project which was the quality that, according to him, conferred nobility. To this end, he used the giant order, always so linked to official architecture. Based on the idea already proposed two years earlier for the Circulo Mercantil building, the architect, with an identical scheme, proposed a base with a porticoed gallery, a noble body with attached columns that impart a monumental effect, and an attic with a cornice that frames the Corporation's coat of arms in the centre. As a charismatic element, the tall tower stands out, located on the side of the building facing the sea, rising as a reference for the whole ensemble.

Marrero also designed, following the same design and as an extension of the Island Council at its rear, the headquarters of the Delegación de Hacienda (Treasury Delegation), separated from the main building by a narrow corridor of about three metres. The whole complex relates unequivocally to its surroundings, maintaining the same intention on all its façades.

Inside the Island Council building, apart from the magnificent imperial staircase with inverted development made of marble, the decoration of the Plenary Hall with paintings by the Canarian artist José de Aguiar should be highlighted.

Construction work on this paradigmatic building began on 2 January 1935 and was completed in 1940.

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